A Brief Introduction to Human Evolution

An insight into the human evolution

Human evolution is a prolonged process that the human ancestors went through before fully becoming the modern day humans. Scientists use fossil evidence to support this, stating that modern people share the same physical and behavioral characteristics as their primate ancestry.

Scientists argue that humans are literally primates because the modern humans share the same physical and genetic relations with the apes in Africa; meaning both apes and humans share the same ancestry. The early human ancestors lived in Africa about 6 million years ago where the evolution majorly took place.

Fossils discovered in Africa indicate that humans acquired various traits like bipedalism (the ability to walk upright and on two legs), language and the ability to use and make complex tools here. Other abilities, like art and cultural diversity came on later as they migrated to other parts of the world, like Europe, America, and Australia. These fossils also show different species of the human ancestry at different stages of evolution with the homo sapiens being the modern day man.

How the evolution process occurs?

Evolution a gradual process where environmental changes force species to either develop new ways to adapt to these changed or face extinction. Evolution causes changes in the whole population of a species that share a specific habitat over a long duration of time. Evolution causes changes on the genetic level. A change in the genes or its structure is passed on from the parent to its offspring from one generation to another.

This change in the gene structure is termed as a mutation. Mutation then influences the physical and behavioral characteristics of an organism over generations, thus influencing its ability to adapt to the environmental changes. Over time, this change in the genetic structure may cause a change in the species life completely. In this way, it may make it change its habitat and growth process.

This explains why the process of human evolution caused a change in the genetic structure in the ape ancestry, enabling them to acquire abilities to adapt to different environmental changes